(To be checked against delivered speech)

European meeting: “Acting together for a Europe of Dignity for All” (Warsaw, 6-7 February 2004)

Speech by the Deputy Secretary General

Minister, Ladies and Gentleman,

The Council of Europe represents a Europe for all, and by all. Our organisation offers a platform for cooperation in Europe which is open to everyone and brings benefits to everyone on our continent.

Everyone means our forty-five member states – virtually all European countries – which participate in the Council of Europe on the basis of absolute equality.

Everyone also means the variety of partners – from governments to parliaments, local and regional authorities but also non-governmental organisations, the grass root Europe – such as the ATD.

Everyone also means all European citizens. The respect of dignity of every human being is the starting point for all our endeavours aimed at protecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe.

The Council of Europe, for example, offers to individuals an opportunity to seek justice over and above the national courts – in an international court of human rights. Seldom has the idea of empowerment been put in such a concrete and efficient form.

Poverty and social exclusion are a threat to freedom, peace and stability in Europe. This is why social rights and efforts to reinforce social cohesion in our societies is one of Council of Europe priorities.

Social rights are not luxuries, they are basic human rights and not subordinate to civil and political human rights. If citizens are deprived of housing, health protection, access to employment and education, their human dignity is violated; they are marginalised and condemned to poverty and exclusion. They are the victims, but the consequences are felt by society as a whole. The cohesion within our communities - and with it their civic, social and economic progress - are undermined.

To make a difference, the Council of Europe is pursuing a twofold approach. On the one hand, we set legal standards, and on the other hand, we promote practical measures and policies to make these legal standards a reality.

Firstly, in order to make social rights as concrete as possible, we have developed over the years an agreed European body of social rights, protected by international legal instruments.

The main instrument is the European Social Charter, which guarantees a long list of social and economic rights, such as: the right to work, the right to adequate and affordable housing, the right to social protection and the right to be protected against social exclusion and poverty.

Just as citizens can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights when they consider their civil and political rights are violated, non-governmental organisations can make a collective complaint on their behalf to the bodies of the Social Charter when they believe that rights protected by the European Social Charter are infringed. I strongly encourage non-governmental organisations to make full use of this procedure to achieve better protection of everyone’s social rights.

As a complement to the legal texts, we have also been developing very practical measures to ensure that social rights become a reality for all in daily life.

Many of our citizens are trapped in a vicious circle of exclusion. If you do not have a home with an address, for example, you may well lose your social protection, and your children cannot go to school. The net of social protection is ultimately useless if it does not extend to those who need it most.

This is why the Council of Europe has centred its efforts on overcoming the obstacles that prevent people from benefiting from their rights. We are pushing our member States to do much more to improve access to social rights for the most vulnerable groups.

Let me give a few recent practical examples:

- in the area of access to work, we are currently working in a small city in Albania, in partnership with the Employment Service, local employers and associations, including NGO’s representing the jobless, in order to help women find jobs or set up their own businesses.

- In a number of localities in Armenia and Azerbaijan, we have been training the staff of the social, employment and health services so as to enable them to give a better service to users.

- In Bulgaria and Slovakia, we have worked with local employment services and the Romani communities with a view to improving the relationship between the Roma jobseekers and the staff of the employment services.

The promotion of social rights is the foundation of our Strategy for Social Cohesion.

Promoting social cohesion means reducing inequalities and disparities in order to avoid the development of two-speed societies with a growing gap between the comfortably off majority and the poor who are obliged to eke out an existence on the margins of society. Building social cohesion is not just a matter of tackling problems such as unemployment or homelessness, however. It also means taking preventive measures to avoid these problems occurring in the first place.

Building more cohesive and more inclusive societies is a common responsibility. State and public bodies, as well as economic actors and representatives of the civil society, all have a role to play.

Consequently, the involvement of all these actors in Council of Europe social cohesion activities is an essential part of our approach. We work closely with organisations representing the most vulnerable and the most excluded groups in society, such as poor people, migrants or ethnic minorities. NGO’s help us greatly in designing strategies and policy recommendations and in implementing activities in the field.

Let me give one or two examples. When working to improve the situation of the Romani communities in areas such as education, employment or access to health care, we have been relying heavily on the advice and expertise of Romani experts and NGO’s. When dealing with issues related to the integration of migrants, we also cooperate with migrants’ organisations. And when working on the issue of delivery of social services, we work together with users’ organisations.

Active participation of the most marginalised also contributes to their empowerment. It is fundamental that the poorest and the most marginalised people have the possibility to speak about and take decisions concerning their lives. They should be able to take part in policy-making instead of being considered as objects of policies.

Over the years, the Council of Europe has granted consultative status to hundreds of NGO’s. This consultative status was recently upgraded to “participatory status”, providing more scope for active involvement in the work of the Council of Europe. With this, our organisation is breaking new ground in relations between international organisations and NGO’s and is creating basis for an unprecedented form of true, meaningful and result-oriented partnership

ATD Fourth-World is one of the organisations which has shown most effectively how NGO’s can make a real contribution to our work. It is a body which can speak with real authority, based on concrete achievements in the fight against poverty and social exclusion. Your organisation helps the most vulnerable members of our societies to speak and to be heard in the European institutions. This is why the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Alvaro Gil Robles and I are here in Warsaw – to speak to you, and to listen. You are our partners. The Council of Europe is determined to work not only for people living in poverty, but to work with them. Because we believe that social and political inclusion is not a matter of charity, but a matter of right!